With a spend of nearly €800,000, the construction of the river beach planned for Odeleite reservoir is nearly ready to start. The contractor has been appointed but the background to the project’s ever-shifting finances are mysterious.

The Council opposition party, the Socialists, points out that the quote for the work just two years ago was €320,000 with the EU chipping in €220,000, so why has it gone up to €830,000 with ratepayers shelling out for a €600,000 bank loan?

Olhão Council’s municipal company, Ambiolhão, is said to have budgeted around €3.5 million to rid Armona, the Ria Formosa island set in a natural park,  of hundreds of domestic septic tanks.

Despite having charged property owners for years for water supply and sewage treatment, only water has been supplied. An estimated 800 properties are linked to individual septic tanks as no foul water network has ever been installed on the island.

A man, armed with a knife, entered the service station shop at Pinheiros de Marim in Olhão, on Tuesday, forcing the sales person to hand over cash and tobacco.

The video surveillance images show the hooded male enters the Cepsa store at 21.28 and confront the employee.

Francisco Amaral will resign within a week from his position of mayor of Castro Marim.

The resignation takes effect from February 21, and the Council estimates that an election will be held in May.

The Algarve’s tourism income was over a billion euros last year, up by 4.7% compared to 2017. The number of visitors rose from 1.5% to 4.2 million guests.

Data from the National Institute of Statistics on the region’s tourist activity, showed a slight decrease in overnight stays, down by 1%, but still registering 18.8 million.

In 2018, the number of complaints received by Anacom increased by 3% due to the increase of gripes about Portugal’s postal service sector.

The total number of complaints received by the regulator was 104,000. Although the vast majority, some 81,000, were related to the telecoms sector, the overall rise was down to the postal sector’s poor performance – complaints were up 43% in a year.

The Government is to approve a package of measures to encourage civil servants to live and work in the sparsely populated interior of the country.

Higher salaries and more holiday time are among the range of tempting goodies to fill vacancies, “within the framework of territorial cohesion strategy,” said the Deputy Economy Minister, Pedro Siza Vieira.

Portugal’s residents again are gorging themselves on credit card spending, taking out mortgages and buying new vehicles in a record breaking splurge the likes of which have not been seen for ten years.

Mortgages are at the top of the list with numbers back to the heady days before the crisis but the Bank of Portugal appears untroubled, saying the credit boom simply is a result of people having more money and more people having jobs.